Creationist Wisdom #693: Shootings in Orlando

Because the writer isn’t a politician, preacher, or other public figure, we won’t embarrass or promote him by using his full name. His first name is Charlie — no, not Charles, he uses “Charlie.” Excerpts from his letter will be enhanced with our Curmudgeonly commentary and some bold font for emphasis. Here we go!

Once again the flag flies at half staff as another mass shooting has taken place, this time in Florida. Many wonder just what is going on. Why this again? When will it stop?

Many argue for more gun laws, while others argue against them. Congress debates the issue and still no real answers. This issue goes across the airwaves as radio talk show hosts point out problems. TV and print media add their voice and so it goes.

Maybe Charlie can clarify things for us. Let’s read on:

The progressives have pushed into education the idea of evolution and that man is really no more than an animal who has worked his way up the food chain to reach where he is at today and hence no real value to his life, nor those about him, a life no different than the animals about him.

What a brilliant insight! Charlie continues:

This has led to a belief that the life of the unborn is of no value, to the life of a stranger is also of no value. Even close friends and family hold little value — if any — for most.

He’s right — friends and family mean nothing to those infernal evolution people! Charlie babbles a bit and then declares:

Conservatives require blame in all this for not standing their ground, but yielding to the progressives or by staying silent, believing that they cannot change things. Then becoming so preoccupied with their own little world, they allowed the progressives many gains.

Right! Conservatives should be even more active in opposing Darwinism. And now we come to the end:

Without a moral foundation and a true change of heart, things will continue to spiral down until the day the flag seldom rises to the top, but remains at half staff.

If it’s really true that among vile evolutionists and atheists, unlike among Xtians, “the life of a stranger is . . . of no value”, why is it that, without exception, all my atheist friends (although, obviously, not all atheists in general) are pacifists while the US is stuffed with self-styled Xtians who publicly salivate over the possibility of carpet-bombing other societies — civilian men, women and children — back into the stone age, with massive loss of life?

The bloodlust among self-styled Xtians in this country is really quite extraordinary (and utterly baffling to outsiders). Among evolutionists, not so much.

Twenty years ago there was a mass shooting in a school in Hungerford. The UK’s response. Pretty much ban all gun ownership apart from farmers’ shot guns. There has been very little gun crime in this country and less than half of the population identify as Christian. And wasn’t the gun man an ISIL supporter, religious and most likely, a creationist. So Charlie…

Twenty years ago there was a mass shooting in a school in Hungerford. The UK’s response. Pretty much ban all gun ownership apart from farmers’ shot guns.

@Jason

You’re conflating two massacres. At Hungerford the shooter simply walked through the streets shooting at anyone he saw. The massacre you’re thinking of happened at Dunblane, in Scotland, and it’s especially etched on my memory since my cousin’s two kids were among the survivors — some of their wee pals weren’t so lucky. (Tennis players Andy and Jamie Murray were another two survivors.)

There was a huge fuss over the banning of most categories of privately owned guns, particularly from the sports shooters — the usual “Why are we being penalized for the acts of others?” stuff. But, as you say, the net effect has been that gun crime is still a relative rarity in the UK.

realthog – spot on re pacifism and Christianity. The small denominations within Christianity that espouse pacifism [e.g. Mennonites, Brethren, Quakers] have always been at the fringe, and often mocked and despised by the mainstream protestants. Up until the end of the draft, most religious pacifists did two years of Civilian Public Service but still got labeled as un-American, un-Christian, un-whatever and chicken-livered pinko commies, for not participating in state-sponsored violence.

The problem here in the U.S., IMHO, is that politicians are disconnected from what the general public believes. Polls show that most Americans, including members of the NRA, support strengthening background checks and at least some regulation of unusually lethal weaponry. The opposition exists among a loud but relatively small portion of the population, and of course the manufacturers and lobbyists (NRA et. al.) in the gun industry.

The same is true with most hot-button issues in American politics. The population generally holds much more nuanced views than the polarized political discourse would have you believe. Unfortunately fringe voters are the ones most motivated to vote in primaries, thus the party candidates who survive the primary process tend to reflect those extremes.

By definition, the former want to slow or stop change, or at most to undo some very recent change(s) they dislike. The latter, however, want to roll things back to a more distant (and heavily idealized) past. They’re like the folks who hold those mock medieval jousts, complete with costumes and (fake) weapons, but never add in all the filth and stink, the smallpox scars, the rotting teeth and so on of the “good old days.” Creationists want to do this to science. If they were to succeed, God help America, because nothing else could.